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Dr. Vasan Ramachandran, founding dean of The University of Texas School of Public Health San Antonio (UT School of Public Health San Antonio), was interviewed by the Associated Press about health-related concerns in rural communities and his current research that aims to find out why there are higher rates of heart and lung disease. The story was picked up by several news organizations.

Public health experts from some of the nation’s leading research institutions have deployed a massive medical trailer to rural parts of the South to test and survey thousands of local residents as part of the . The goal: to understand why the rates of heart and lung disease are dramatically higher there than in other parts of the U.S.

“This rural health disadvantage, it doesn’t matter whether you’re white or Black, it hurts you,” said Dr. Vasan Ramachandran, a leader of the project who used to oversee the  — the nation’s longest-running study of heart disease. “No race is spared, although people of color fare worse.”

The researchers aim to test the heart and lung function of roughly 4,600 residents of 10 counties and parishes in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi while collecting information about their environments, health history and lifestyles. They are also giving participants a fitness tracker and plan to survey them repeatedly for years to check for any major medical events.

Ramachandran said rural populations in the U.S. rarely receive such personal, long-term attention from epidemiologists. More than a dozen institutions are helping with the study, including Johns Hopkins University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University.

The 52-foot-long (16-meter-long), 27-ton trailer is outfitted with instruments that examine calcium in the arteries, the structure of the heart, lung capacity and other, more common health indicators such as blood pressure and weight. The initial exam can take more than three hours.

The trailer is now in Louisiana’s northeastern Franklin Parish, where the death rate from heart disease between 2019 and 2021 was a whopping 859 per 100,000 people for those 35 and over, according to the CDC data. About 200 miles (322 kilometers) south in New Orleans, it was 340.

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute plans to extend the study to 2031, and researchers hope to examine all the participants in person again.

Story links:

• Associated Press
• Yahoo
• Yahoo! News Australia
• KPRC 2 (Houston)
• KSAT 12 (San Antonio)